Boggle your mind

Professors Boynton and Fischer (Boston College and IMD) suggest ways for us to exercise our innovation muscles. By keeping thorough guidelines in open minds, the pair suggests paths to greater success in career and life.

	Title:	The Idea Hunter
	Author:	Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer
	Pages:	192pages
	Publisher:	Jossey-Bass
	Price:	$25.95

Some of us are curious by nature. We ask questions, we prod sources for knowledge, we seek understanding. Others among us are lazier. We fall into easy habits, we get used to doing things certain ways, we suspend questioning.

For the co-authors of The Idea Hunter, professors Bill Fischer and Andy Boynton, inquisitive behavior if not innate can be acquired. If you are not a born idea hunter like Henry Ford, Sam Walton or the dozens of other celebrities mentioned in this book, then you can become such a hunter.

The purpose of this short and sassy book is to provide us (the lazier segment) with a framework for becoming idea hunters – and therefore idea generators. This hunt is automatically fruitful, for it is to be applied to areas about which we feel passionate.

Why hunt?
The importance of hunting for ideas is not just looking for the big idea that might have a tremendous impact or might disrupt an industry by its scope. The hunt is also for small ideas and improvements such as the coffee cup lid that fits all cups or the toothbrush that reminds children to turn off the tap while scrubbing.

For the co-authors, there are three principles to respect in one’s hunt. Principle one is knowing your gig, i.e. what one feels passionate about. Principle two is to be open-minded about what ideas to hunt for. Principle three is being able to recognize how the world at large can connect to plans and projects.

IDEA, the four-pronged methodology
Now that the authors have explained the why of idea-hunting, they propose a four-pronged methodology, conveniently hidden behind the I-D-E-A abbreviation. I stands for being Interested. D stands for being Diverse. E stands for being Exercised. A stands for being Agile.

In this portion of our three-part series, we will examine the I column. This is the portion where managers need to be interested in their surroundings – business environment, social network, colleagues’ thoughts when chatting around the water cooler. The authors emphasize that interest should not be strictly professional, but can spill over into other unrelated areas.

A bounty of examples are provided to illustrate how successful people have cultivated the Interest factor. Perhaps one of the most striking is provided by Thomas Edison, the prolific inventor who consigned all his thoughts to a series of more than 2,500 notebooks (often more than 200 pages long), containing his daily scribbles, charts, and back of envelope calculations that provided the background for his astonishing 1,093 American patents.

The co-authors have true fascination for this breed of I-intense manager, calling these people true learning machines. Whether a Sam Walton, a Clarence Birdseye, or a Silicon Valley entrepreneur such as Tim O’Reilly, these managers have a fascination for what others are doing and thinking and how they can learn from them. This hunt for knowledge, this observation of trends, leads directly or indirectly to ideas for one’s own business (see Box).

The co-authors point out that Thomas Edison assembled a motley crew of workers that included not just engineers but also a glassblower, a watchmaker, a mathematician, and a textile machinist. This heterogeneity was a source of ideas by dint of the differing perspectives of these experts.

For the authors the serendipity of the hunt makes for its charm. One can never tell from which source one’s next bright idea may come. Keeping an open mind is key.

Published in September 2011 by Chris Fodor